Alissa Nutting - Tampa

“Is this book like that TV show Survivor ?” Marissa asked. Stained red from candy canes, the students’ tongues appeared to have been dyed by communal blood in a satanic cult ceremony.

“Sure,” I said, opening the door and practically pushing them out of the classroom. “Happy holidays. Bon voyage.” Of late, Jack had begun to exit the class with a too-cool air: not looking at me, slightly sauntering, effortfully aping casual. But today he gave me a smirk of foretold pleasure—his birthday was over the Christmas holiday, which he mostly had to spend at his mother’s. As a final hurrah before his departure, we were going to make the drive to the Toucan Inn after school as a seedy holiday gift to ourselves. Seeing angel-faced Jack standing nude inside a room normally used for hourly blow jobs and heroin binges struck me as a delicious treat: the juxtaposition would vividly magnify all his boyish qualities.

I picked him up at dusk behind a gas station; when I pulled in he was wandering to and fro with a small bow-topped box in his hands, as though he was working up the courage to walk in and propose marriage to the station’s attendant. I wore my red wig and had cash for the hotel desk clerk; if asked for ID, I figured I could simply claim not to have it on me and he wouldn’t refuse the money, but no such ruse was required. “An hour?” he guessed, taking in the faux electric hue of my hair and the oversized sunglasses that eclipsed most of my face. He was smoking behind the counter and watching a reality cop show. The same show’s crew had once visited Ford’s precinct, but no footage of him was chosen. This had deeply interrupted Ford’s sense of entitlement. His friends had already taken to calling him “movie star”—when the Fordless episode aired, he’d turned to me on the sofa and repeated, about twelve times, “Can you believe it?”

I wouldn’t let Jack touch any of the carpeting or bedding in the room—“You could get crabs just thinking about it,” I told him. Instead I had him take off all his clothes and lie down across the bathroom countertop with his penis hanging down in the sink and his butt positioned directly below the faucet.

“This is weird,” he said, not judging so much as objectively noticing. He started to set his face down on the counter, then recoiled and placed an arm underneath his cheek. “The counter’s kind of sticky.”

“You’ll survive.” I turned on the water, watching his cheeks momentarily buckle together, then began to carefully wash his asshole, which made him laugh.

“Does it tickle?” I asked, pressing the tip of my soapy finger centimeters inside him.

He nodded and I rinsed and patted him dry before I started giving him his very first rim job. He made no sound or expression, perhaps equally afraid to like it or dislike it, but when I turned him over he was exceptionally hard and it took only seconds of sucking the tip of his penis for him to come down the back of my throat. For a moment he sat very still on the counter, ass in the sink and head back against the mirror, and I wondered for a second if he felt too out of control—too molested perhaps, his orgasms a seeming consent to acts he didn’t fully enjoy. But then he bounded off the counter and grabbed the box he’d brought with him. “Here,” he said, immediately sheepish. “This is for you.” He looked so anxious that for a moment I worried it might indeed be an engagement ring—that somehow he’d gotten a diamond band, or even a cubic zirconia one, figuring it’s the thought that counts—and was about to suggest that we embark upon a four-year engagement to legality. When he opened the box to reveal only a pair of gold hoop earrings, Jack easily misinterpreted my flooding relief as happiness.

“They’re just so beautiful,” I gushed. “Truly. These are simply perfect; I can wear them with anything.”

The part of me that had once voiced concern about having any object that could be linked to Jack—that would’ve asked Jack if the earrings were a family heirloom or made sure he hadn’t taken them from his mother, who might discover them missing and mention them to Buck—no longer fussed over such neurotic worries; our repeated contact without consequence meant I didn’t sweat small details anymore. “You like them?” he said, fishing.

“I love them.” I smiled.

“And you love me?” He was fishing again, his smile widening. I bent to the floor, put his cock in my mouth, and began speaking in muffled words. He laughed, pushing me off.

“What?” I smiled. “You can’t understand me?” These mere seconds on the Toucan’s carpet gave my knees a rash that took days to fade.

Less carefree as of late was Jack and Buck’s relationship. For one, Jack’s grades were suffering—Jack simply seemed distracted this term, Buck lamented, like he couldn’t get his head in the game. “But his English grade is fantastic,” I pointed out.

“Well,” Buck said, winking at me, “that’s because he has a great teacher.”

Despite the arrangement being his idea, Jack likewise seemed to grow defiant whenever Buck insisted upon time alone with me. If Buck put on a movie, he’d ask Jack to go to his room and start on homework. Occasionally Buck would even set the dinner table for two and tell Jack to eat in the kitchen. “We need grown-up time,” he’d insist, and Jack would slam doors and make protestations. The worst incident happened days after the visit to the hotel. At dinner, Buck also gave me a Christmas present—earrings as well, moderately expensive diamond ones—and Jack’s eyes immediately made the comparison and saw how much shorter his sword was in this particular duel.

Trying to make Jack feel better, I politely highlighted their impracticality. “I can’t take these home,” I argued. “If my husband saw these, he would definitely start asking questions.”

Buck shrugged. “So just wear them when you’re here.” With that he stood and began to take out the earrings I was wearing. They happened to be the very same earrings Jack had bought me.

Jack loudly pushed his chair back from the table and threw his fork to the ground, stomping off to his room. “What the hell?” Buck asked, but he didn’t dwell on it; he was too busy outfitting my lobes with his prize.

It was only because of Jack’s melancholy at being outgifted that I agreed to meet him once over the break—two days before Christmas—several hours away in the town where his mother lived with her husband and his seventeen-and nineteen-year-old sons, whom Jack apparently loathed enough to prefer residence with Buck. We’d made a plan to rendezvous at the mall in one of the handicapped restrooms, where Jack alleged that one of his stepbrothers took girlfriends to fornicate all the time—a single room with a locking door, a sink and a toilet. “He sounds like a romantic guy,” I’d joked. It was bold of us, but the chaos of the holiday meant the mall would be teeming and overcrowded, all security personnel busy watching merchandise instead of trying to halt any hanky-panky in the toilets. Even if we were caught in the bathroom together, I reasoned that nothing could be proven. I could allege that Jack had seen me enter the bathroom, recognized me as a trusted teacher and, being in the middle of a personal crisis, came and knocked on the door wanting to have a private conversation, which I allowed him. I doubted they could legally have cameras in the bathroom; there would be no proof that we’d been copulating against the hand dryer instead of talking.

I got a blended iced coffee drink and waited on a bench near the restrooms. The moment I saw him enter the main doors, I walked into the bathroom and locked the door. I’d come prepared for the worst—the possibility that the bathroom’s previous occupant was a customer of size on a mobility scooter whose food court cheesesteak hadn’t agreed with him, perhaps—and quickly took out a small can of Lysol, misting the room’s corners.